


that which is irreplaceable

by arianakristine



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Coital, The 'I Almost Lost You' Kiss, True Love, Tumblr Prompt, kiss prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:54:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27332272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arianakristine/pseuds/arianakristine
Summary: 1x07 canon-divergence. The "I almost lost you" kiss.
Relationships: Huntsman | Sheriff Graham/Emma Swan
Comments: 7
Kudos: 15





	that which is irreplaceable

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt from diddykongfan. In 2011, we would have still been using the "old" version of CPR, but note that nowadays we do "Circulation-Airway-Breathing" (CAB) instead of ABC.

“The curse is real.”

She tilts her head to look at him, still feeling the drowsiness of sleep tingling around her senses. She frowns slightly. “What?”

He sighs, rubbing the small of her back. She feels lazy, that drunk feeling of coming down from ecstasy. Her mind isn’t fully functioning, she knows, so he couldn’t possibly be saying what she thinks he’s saying.

Graham tilts her chin up with his index finger, pressing delicate kisses to her swollen lips. Finally, he gives a wry smile. “Henry is right.”

Her mind is in overload, trying to process the idea that tempering the sexual tension is doing nothing to tamp down the feelings in her belly, but his words are offering a distraction. She hinges her knee to hook around his leg and rocks forward. “Henry’s an imaginative boy,” she ventures, and leans in to capture his lips more acutely.

He hums an agreement, wrapping her naked body closer to his own. “Yes, that’s true. But the book he’s been reading is completely true, if perhaps a little romanticized.”

“So you’re saying you believe in his fantasies,” she asks bluntly. Her body is still vibrating, more so when he touches her skin oh-so-delicately, but internally she worries. He went to her boy for help just this afternoon; why was she encouraging this?

“I’m saying they’re not so fictional,” he says matter-of-factly, then dips his head to press wet, whiskered kisses into her neck. Her eyes nearly roll back as she tries desperately to cling to her sanity.

“This is unfair,” she whines instead, and rolls her thighs so that he can fall nicely between them. Her heart rate is slowly increasing, and her lips curve into a smile as his hand cups her hip.

He hums an agreement, and then finally returns to her eye level. His gaze is soft, adoring. “You are the Savior. But you’re also another something to me,” he says.

She prickles slightly, that title that Henry wants so much to bestow on her. It almost yanks her from the haze, but then he’s kissing her again, and her stomach clenches. She is barely able to catch her breath once he releases her lips for her jaw, and her head lolls to the side to follow him, breaths heavy.

“You,” he says thickly, his accent rumbling against her skin. “Well … only one things breaks curses like this, Emma.”

She can’t concentrate, not when his tongue is laving her pulse point and his fingertips are tracing her hipbone. Not when she knows how it will feel when she arches her back and takes him in, not when her soul is fluttering with something deeper. “Graham,” she insists, and tugs on the strands of hair in her grip.

He makes a gorgeously needy sound, but only continues to nip at her throat. “I can’t believe I almost lost this,” he murmurs, and then nuzzles into her.

Fear pits back into her stomach, and she brings his head back up to her face. She crashes her lips into his, inhaling through her nose as she drinks him in. She almost lost him. She doesn’t want to think of what that fall could have come to, what might have happened if he hadn’t taken that sharp inhale after her first rescue breath. She wants him, again, maybe several times after that, just to prove to herself that he is okay.

His cheeks are stamped pink and his gaze is smoky, breaths hard and sharp against her lips. “It’s going to be hard,” he mumbles, distracted, and kisses her again, short, staccato. “You’re going to need help if you’re going to break it for everyone else.” 

“Shut up,” she replies savagely, and lifts her hips to his. “Please.”

He smirks cockily, but distances himself a touch. She growls in frustration, and he pins her hands on either side of her head. “Emma, do you understand what I’m saying?” he asks.

The heat of his lower body is hovering tantalizingly close and his eyes are dizzying. What did he want her to say again? She bites down on her lip and tries to roll her hips closer to him. “What you’ve been saying since yesterday,” she answers distractedly, arching her back.

He nudges her nose with his and moves his knees to pin her legs, but doesn’t let any other part touch her. “Emma … do you understand?”

She swallows and she tightens her jaw before her lower lip can tremble. She can’t really see past the point where she is pumping her hands up and down on his chest, out of order in her freaking A-B-Cs but the CPR class so distant, tears blurring her vision and quickly losing count. He came back to life. He had been cold in her arms, but then he opened his eyes on her and melted her right back into a kiss that had been as desperate as it was terrified.

He is right here, now, lashes thick and close enough to count, faint freckles scattered across his cheek that she’d never noticed before, lips warm and curved and quickly memorized through all senses.

So, no, she can’t understand. She can’t when all she can think about is crawling into his skin to imprint herself there, to meld them into one so she can be sure he can’t leave her again.

His gaze softens after a beat, and he takes pity on her, easing up his grip and dropping his weight on her. He holds her close before swapping their places, until she is balancing on his lap. The springs of the cell bed squeak nosily as she settles. It would be easy to sink onto him, to take what she has been so desperate for again, but she hesitates. His dark blue eyes are urgently serious.

“The curse … you think it’s real,” she finally bites out.

“No, Emma,” he says, and reaches up to cup her face. His calloused palm feels just rough and real enough to ground her. “No, I’m not saying ‘I think.’ I’m saying it is.”

Her forehead creases. She doesn’t want to get into this. “Can we—“ her breath hitches, and she hates the part of her that feels like breaking down again. “Just … can we just—“

“Emma,” he says again, and she doesn’t know how he can just say her name and she is at all attention.

The thought of the curse turns her stomach; she relates it too much to his closed eyes and still body. She presses her hands to steady her weight over his chest now, right hand moving over his heart. She stares at the center of his chest, where her compressions had shakily begun. Idly, she wonders if she cracked his ribs, and a trickle of hysterical laughter escapes her. She squeezes her eyes shut before she finally is able to grind out, “you were dead.”

“I know,” he says evenly, and moves that hand across her jaw and down her arm, settling over the one on his heart. She opens her eyes to watch him. He shows no signs of pain, not a wince or a hesitation. “I’m here.”

She feels the build of a sob but doesn’t let it escape. She nods rapidly. “You’re here,” she echoes.

“Why?” he implores, dark eyes wide.

She swallows again, harder this time. She begins to shake her head, and then rips her gaze from him. Bits from that damn book, some in Henry’s voice, some in Mary Margaret’s, some in her own encroach her mind. She knows what he’s getting at, what breaks these things according to the fairytales. And behind the bricks of her own pragmatism, she can see it. She almost sees now a clash of swords and the trunk of a tree before she suppresses it down. “Please,” she whispers, and her vision hazes over. She blinks back the tears before they can fall and shakes her head. “Please, just … show me?”

He seems to see the way some of her resolve has crumbled, and meets her in a forceful kiss. His hands wander again, distracting rather than directing. In relief, her eyes slip close and a couple tears bead down her cheek.

Maybe … maybe tomorrow she can think about this. Maybe tomorrow she can follow clues and make connections. Maybe tomorrow she can believe in the curse.

Today, all the reality she can bring herself to believe in is him.


End file.
